


While We Froze Down Below

by SilentP



Category: Homestuck
Genre: AU, Gen, Hurt/Comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-01
Updated: 2013-02-01
Packaged: 2017-11-27 18:25:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,197
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/665078
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SilentP/pseuds/SilentP
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The universe has never been fair to Roxy Lalonde or Dirk Strider, and a year and a half is a long time to be alone.</p>
            </blockquote>





	While We Froze Down Below

Roxy lives in rural New York, in the home her mother left her. Dirk lives wherever he can find work- he’s moved three times in the past five years, going from apartment to apartment, city to city. Dallas, San Francisco, Detroit, and it was never his fault when he lost his jobs, but he always did.

“If I believed in it, I’d say I’m cursed,” he says on the phone, the day after his arm has been broken by a coworker knocking him off a ladder. “They’re going to get rid of me so they don’t have to wait for me to get better. Maybe they’ll even bother to come up with a bullshit excuse for it.”

Roxy hmms into her mouthpiece and stares at the tiles of her kitchen floor, contemplating mopping. It’s eleven o’clock. There’s no one for her to keep awake with her late-night cleaning. “Time to go job searching again?” She doesn’t offer to send money. She can’t spare much, and Dirk wouldn’t take it, anyway.

“Yeah,” he says. “What’s the job market like in the in nowhereville?”

Roxy taps her fingers against the phone case. “Yes, I have an extra bedroom you can live in, and I have some contacts. I’ll ask if they’re looking for help, you book your ticket.”

She can hear him shift the phone on his shoulder. “That’s not where I was going with this, but if you insist.” She can picture him now, sitting at his desk and pretending he doesn’t want to smile.

“Stop lying,” she says, and she tries on a smile for the both of them.

 

* * *

 

Now, it’s four in the afternoon on a Thursday, and she’s waiting with her car in park outside the arrivals gate at Stewart International after a three hour drive from her house (not home- too empty, too cold, too _silent_ ) up by Utica. She glances from her phone to the automatic doors and back again, taps Morse code into her steering wheel in the pattern of “hurry up.”

Her phone buzzes with a text, and she doesn’t even look to see if it’s him. ‘Suitcase wrangling. I’ll be there soon.’

She shakes her head, because of course he’d write out sentences and capitalize in a text. ‘c u ;)’ she sends back, because the shorthand will make him sigh. Then she tugs on her mittens and slides out of her car into the cold. In only a moment, he’s walking out of the doors, tired and tousled in that way that only airplane travel can cause. He’s only her half-brother, but they share pale hair and skin, chapped lips, bony fingers. In her snow boots, her forehead is at his eye level. It’s been five years, but she would recognize him anywhere.

“So,” he starts, shifting his grip on his suitcase. His shirt is short-sleeved, and Roxy shivers just looking at him. She doesn’t know how he isn’t freezing already, but the plaster on his left arm is too bulky for a sleeve.

She takes off her scarf and loops it around his neck. The purple goes horribly with the faded orange of his shirt. “C’mere, you,” she says, and pulls him into the tightest hug she can manage. “Dirkk, Dirky Dirk Dirk, are you insane, it is _January_ in _New York State_ , you need at least five more layers if you don’t want to freeze into an orange creamsicle. Please tell me you have a jacket.” She pulls back, hands on his shoulders, looks him up and down, then glares into his eyes. “Please tell me you have boots!”

A cold wind blows past them, and he doesn’t even shiver, probably to spite her. She tugs her scarf tighter around his neck in retaliation. “In my suitcase, Roxy,” he says. “Give me some credit. I had to go through airport security, I was not going to wear shoes with laces. Let’s go before I freeze my balls off.”

He can’t use one hand, but Roxy wrestles his suitcase into the trunk of her car on her own. When he settles into the passenger seat, Roxy turns up the heat and tosses her coat into the back with the debris of car scrapers and tissue boxes and the remains of the fast food lunch she got on her way down. “C’mon, let’s go home,” she says, shifting out of park.

“I’ve never lived with you.”

“Spoilsport,” she says, and takes her eyes off of the airport driveway to stick her tongue at him.

 

* * *

 

“It was a classic flight experience, really.” Dirk says an hour into the drive to Roxy’s house. “Not enough legroom, and the person in front of me decided to lean their seat back until their headrest was about five inches from my nose. The airline even remembered the complimentary crying baby.”

“Did you get searched at security, too?” Roxy tries to focus on the road, but she sees Dirk make a face out of the corner of her eye and giggles. She resolves to pull his mouth into a smile when she gets the chance. She can’t be doing all the smiling for the both of them.

He shakes his head. “That’s the only part of it that wasn’t a hassle. Apparently security decided to be nice and not pick on the guy with the cast.” Conversation fades, replaced by the hum of the radiator.

“I’ve been worried about you, you know,” he says eight miles later.

This time, Roxy tightens her hands on the wheel and doesn’t turn to face him. “Really? You’re the one who’s had it hard for the past few years. If anything, I’m more worried about you.”

He stares at her hard, but she doesn’t turn to meet his eyes. “You know why, Roxy. You’ve been living alone in that house ever since she died-“ “And I’ve managed,” Roxy interrupts. “You just like to worry, Dirk.” She turns on the radio. The sound of Beethoven’s Violin Concerto fills the car. Roxy hasn’t listened to Classical since she packed away her mother’s violin, but she leaves it on for the rest of the drive.

 

* * *

 

The roads are dark and empty by the time they pull into Roxy’s driveway. The house is dark and empty, too, and Roxy thinks of the lights she will have to turn on, the food she will have to make, the room she will have to clean out to make room for Dirk. At least he isn’t picky about food. He won’t mind if she leaves the dishes until tomorrow, or that she’s been leaving them until tomorrow for the past week. There will be no pointed reminders to do her chores from him, which is nice because she hates the way her nails get soft after scrubbing pots.

The front steps are covered in snow. Roxy almost slips as she helps Dirk drag his suitcase up to the front door. They both stand in the foyer, stamping snow off their shoes and dusting it out of their hair. In a few minutes the entranceway will be a huge puddle. Roxy doesn’t care. She simply kicks off her boots and runs around the house, turning on the lights in the living room, in the hall, in the spare room. She even turns on the Christmas lights that she’s left up on the mantel for the past three weeks. (She hadn’t bothered with a tree. Without anyone to open presents with, dragging an evergreen into her living room would have been too much of a hassle.)

She can feel Dirk looking at her, but he doesn’t say anything. Instead, he hangs her scarf up by the door, grabs the handle of his suitcase, and asks, “So where am I staying?”

“The guest room is this way. Oh, wait there for a second!” She flies into the kitchen, and returns with a pink sharpie in hand. She makes a beckoning gesture at the plastered arm, and she can sense Dirk rolling his eyes at her, but he does it anyway. A few moments later, “Roxy was here” is scrawled across his forearm. She draws a heart around it, then adds some diamonds for good measure. “That sappy enough for you, Mr. Irony?” she asks as she caps the marker.

“It’s perfect. I love it,” he says, deadpan. “Now, if you don’t mind, I’ve been carrying this suitcase around all day, and I would like to use my functioning hand for something else.”

She waves a hand at the staircase. “Up there, first door on the right. Don’t even think about going into my room! I will end you.”

Dirk’s suitcase goes k-thunk, k-thunk, k-thunk up the stairs. “We’re not five any more, Roxy,” he says.

 

* * *

 

The two of them stay up talking until the early hours of the morning, when Roxy finally begs off in favor of sleep. Dirk retires to the guest room for three hours before the wind and the creaking of the house wake him up. He lies still and stares at the ceiling until he’s sure he won’t be getting any more sleep, at which point he pulls a pair of thick socks and a sweatshirt out of the suitcase he hadn’t bothered unpacking, and fumbles his way through the house to the kitchen.

Once there, he flicks on the lamp by the table and starts cleaning up the remains of dinner. He piles the dishes into the sink and turns on the water. He doesn’t worry about the noise it makes. Roxy has fallen asleep mid-phone call before. Washing dishes won’t wake her up.

The plates from dinner are easily cleaned, even when he has to keep his left hand away from the water. He wipes them off and sets them out to dry on autopilot, and stares at the kitchen while he does. He hasn’t been to Roxy’s house in seven years or so, but the house looks exactly the same as he remembers it. The guest room’s pink quilt, the thick rag rug in the hallway, the coffee table in the living room just the right height to slam his shins into if he’s not careful. He’ll trip over it at some point during his stay, and Roxy will laugh and check for a concussion. He thinks he won’t mind.

He dries his hand on a towel and hops up to sit on the counter, staring at the rest of the room. It isn’t only the décor that hasn’t changed. There’s a grocery list on the fridge that’s far too legible for Roxy to have written it. There’s a knitting project lying on the side of the kitchen table. Roxy’s mother is the only person Dirk has ever known to knit.

It’s been a year and a half. Sometime this week, he thinks, he will find a box to put these things in, and bring it to the attic. He won’t throw them away. He’s not that cruel.

Outside the window, there’s a groan, then a loud crack. Dirk leans toward the window above the sink to see one of the limbs of the enormous old oak in the backyard fallen to the ground. Roxy called it the king of her backyard, when he first visited her, but now it looks old and skeletal, standing dark against the snow. He hears a creak from the stairs, then the living room, crosses his legs at the ankle as he waits for Roxy to enter.

“Mom, what are you doing awake?” she says as she tiptoes into the kitchen. Dirk stares back at her from his seat on the counter.

“Oh. Uh, sorry.” Her voice is brittle. Her smile cracks at the edges. “You aren’t wearing enough purple bathrobe for me to make that mistake. Or squid earrings. Let’s redo that, I can mistake you for Santa instead-“

He slips off the counter, sees the tears in her eyes. She doesn’t meet his eyes. She blinks hard, but the tears don’t go away. “Roxy,” he says, and then his arms are around her. The cast is bulky and in the way, but that doesn't matter. Their hugs have been awkward ever since they met. He hears her choke, and then she’s sobbing into her shoulder. He’s never heard her cry, but she’s clinging to him now, gasping out jagged sobs into his shirt, and Dirk rocks her back and forth, combing his hand through her hair.

It takes a long time for her to stop crying, and even longer for her to loosen her grip. By then, his toes are freezing even despite the socks. When she pulls back, her eyes are puffy and red. She sniffs. “I miss her.”

“I know,” Dirk says. He gives her one last long, lingering hug. He wishes he had never left her here in this old house that is too big for one person and a ghost. “C’mon, let’s make hot chocolate. It is way too fucking cold.”

They end up on the couch in the living room, buried under approximately five blankets each. They drink hot chocolate and sit around in their pajamas, and the puffiness around Roxy’s eyes slowly fades as the sky lightens with sunrise.

**Author's Note:**

> Blah, blah, first post. If you see a typo, or awkward wording, or something of that sort, please let me know. Also, critique will get me to sing your praises.


End file.
